AcademicMatters Mai 2010 OCUFA’S JOURNAL OF HIGHER EDUCATION | LA REVUE D’ENSEIGNEMENT SUPÉRIEUR D’UAPUO Challenging the Academy Publication May An OCUFA William Ayers Class Warriors Joel Westheimer Higher Education or Education for Hire Simon Marginson The University: Punctuated by Paradox David Rayside The Queer Agenda on Campus: Invisible? Stalled? Incomplete? Brian Little Acting Out of Character in the Immortal Profession 18 | Academic Matters MAY|MAI 2010 May|Mai 3 Class Warriors William Ayers Banned last year from speaking at the University of Nebraska, William Ayers argues that the current trend towards “academic capitalism” gives faculty the moment to speak up – and act up. 8 Higher Education or Education for Hire: Corporatization and the Threat to Democratic Thinking Joel Westheimer Teaching critical thinking is the university’s democratic mission, and today’s universities are failing to deliver. Universities need to reverse the trend that has them focusing on workforce preparation and the commercialization of knowledge and resurrect higher education’s public purpose. 14 The University: Punctuated by Paradox P. 3 Simon Marginson Old/new, engaged/separate, public/private, elite/mass-oriented, national/global, but for universities, paradox is vital. 19 The Queer Agenda on Campus: Invisible? Stalled? Incomplete? David Rayside For universities to become truly inclusive, sexual orientation and gender identity have to be fully incorporated into the employment equity agenda. 24 Acting out of Character in the Immortal Profession Brian Little Sometimes, the academic life demands that faculty deny their fundamental personality traits. But if collegial respect includes allowing colleagues the latitude to nurture their true characters, academics can survive and thrive amidst the challenges of academic life. 29 An Academic Life: Peter Dale Scott David MacGregor 31 Humour Matters 32 Editorial Matters P. 14 MORE ON THE ACADEMIC MATTERS WEBSITE Bonnie Stelmach, Jim Parsons, and William C. Frick, Fear and Loathing in the Academy: A Journey to the Heart of the Academic’s Fading Dream P. 19 Cover illustration: Marie-Claude Carignan AcademicMatters Letters to the Editor OCUFA’S JOURNAL OF HIGHER EDUCATION LA REVUE D’ENSEIGNEMENT SUPÉRIEUR D’UAPUO Academic Matters is published two times a year by OCUFA, and is received by 17,000 professors, academic librarians and others interested in higher education issues across Canada. The journal explores issues of relevance to higher education in Ontario, other provinces Thanks for the issue on tenure in Canada, and globally. It is intended to be a forum for thoughtful and thought-provoking, original and engaging I really enjoyed the Fall issue of Academic Matters, with its very interesting articles and arguments. discussion of current trends in post secondary education I am personally interested in the politics of tenure because of where I am in my career, but the and consideration of academe’s future direction. discussion explored a breadth of related issues of interest to faculty at all levels. Readers are encouraged to contribute their views, ideas and talents. Letters to the editor (maximum 250 words) Thanks for a great issue. are welcome and may be edited for length. To provide an article or artwork for Academic Matters, please send Kendra Coulter, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminology. your query to Editor-in-Chief Mark Rosenfeld at University of Windsor [email protected]. Reproduction of articles requires the permission of the author and publisher. Copyright in material accepted for publication remains with the author. The publisher may Tenure and changing times choose, however, to translate and/or reproduce material Mark Kingwell (Academic Matters, Fall 2009) argues that tenure is a conservative force, a far in print and electronic form. All published material expresses the view of the author(s) and not the publisher. more plausible position than the “who ever needed it?” attitude of Michael Bliss, who seems Academic Matters accepte volontiers des articles écrits to have forgotten a few things about the 1970s, when it was almost unheard of for someone en anglais ou en français. hired at the University of Toronto not to be granted tenure and when some faculty actually Publisher: did somewhat risky work, even before they were tenured. In the 1970s, moreover, practically OCUFA; Hentry Mandelbaum, Executive Director everyone was more outspoken about everything than now. Students openly accused faculty of Editor-in-Chief: Mark Rosenfeld, Associate Executive Director being conservative. They accused them of being male chauvinists, since, of course, faculty were nearly all male. Graduate students spoke up before landing tenure-track academic jobs and Associate Editor: Wendy Cuthbertson even before graduate assistants at the University of Toronto had a union. Art Direction: Were students then especially brave and reckless? Not necessarily. The times were different but, Eva Kiss, Neglia Design Inc., www.NegliaDesign.com most significant, Canadian society in general felt more economic optimism -- and universities Editorial Board: Valerie Davidson, Glen Jones, Minelle Mahtani, were relatively well funded. This combination of factors meant that many spoke and acted more Jeff McNairn, Vinita Srivastava, Marie-Josée Therrien freely than now, both with and without tenure, leading some to suggest, as Bliss does, that Advisory Committee: tenure is irrelevant. Bert Bruser, Kim Echlin, David Scott, Jason Wong A sense of desperation drives the academically inclined now, when much greater fiscal uncertainty National Advertising Sales: Dovetail Communications has made it harder to land a tenure-track job and harder to be granted tenure in that position. 30 East Beaver Creek Road, Ste. 202 In short, it is very questionable that the experience of Michael Bliss offers any evidence at Richmond Hill, ON L4B 1J2 all that tenure is not an issue. He was mostly just lucky, along with other academics of his Account Manager: Kathryn Bertsch, [email protected] generation. The real issue is public and governmental support of higher education and research Phone (905) 886-6640 ext. 317 of all kinds. Sales Manager: Beth Kukkonen, [email protected] Lynda Lange, Department of Humanities. Phone (905) 886-6640 ext. 306 University of Toronto at Scarborough ISSN 1719-010X For subscription information, please contact: [email protected] Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations 83 Yonge Street, Suite 300, Toronto, ON M5C 1S8 Phone (416) 979-2117 Fax (416) 593-5607 www.ocufa.on.ca www.academicmatters.ca union logo here 2 | Academic Matters MAY|MAI 2010 Class Warriors by William Ayers Professor William Ayers, banned last year from speaking Le professeur William at the University of Nebraska, argues that the current Ayers, à qui l’on a trend towards “academic capitalism” gives faculty the empêché de prononcer un discours à l’Université moment to speak up – and act up. du Nebraska, soutient que la tendance actuelle vers le « capitalisme universitaire » signale aux professeurs le moment de faire entendre leur voix et de passer à l’action. delightful video emerged from the recent student-led A struggles at the University of California organized to resist the grinding and relentless undoing of public higher education: a student attends to her daily routine, writing, reading, sitting in a lecture hall, while the camera focuses here and there, and a voice-over intones: “Pen: $1.69; textbook: $38; backpack: $69; dinner (a tiny packet of dry noodles!): $.50…” And at the end of the list: “Education [pause]…priceless.” The tag-line is perfect: “There are some things that money can’t buy. Don’t let education be one of them.” MAY|MAI 2010 Academic Matters | 19 The crisis in public higher education in the United States below market wages keeps the whole enterprise afloat. is not a joke at all. Tuition and fees are sky-rocketing across Tenured and tenure-track faculty are disappearing, today the country and are already out of reach for millions. Staff cut- holding barely 30 per cent of all faculty lines. Out-of-state stu- backs, lay-offs, and reductions in student services have dents are increasing in most public schools because they pay become common-place. Massive student loans have replaced significantly higher tuitions, and that pattern is turning public grants and scholarships. Class-size is increasing while course colleges and universities into “engines of inequality,” places offerings are decreasing. Hiring freezes and pay-cuts and with less access and less equity, less social justice, and fewer unpaid mandatory furloughs are on the rise as tenure-track highly qualified students, private schools in fact, while positions are eliminated. These and other “short-term” remaining public in name only. strategies for dealing with the financial crisis are con- But even this grim picture can be brought into sharper sistent with the overall direction that has focus and, it turns out, more painful focus. California spends characterized public higher education more on prisons than on higher education. Across the for decades: “restructuring” (biz-speak country, spending on corrections is six times higher than for a single-minded focus on the spending on higher education. From 1985 to 2000 Illinois One might look at all this and conclude that the experiment with privatization is bottom line), privatization, and the increased spending on higher education by 30 per cent, while triumph of “academic capitalism.” And all corrections shot up 100 per cent. Here we get a clearer insight of this is part of a larger crisis of the state into the budget crises that are being rationalized and bal- and larger choices about who pays, and anced on our heads: a permanent war economy is married to who suffers. a prison society, with their abused and neglected offspring A few snapshots: state support paying for their parental sins. for the University of Illinois system One might look at all this and conclude that the exper- stands at about 16 per cent iment with privatization is a failure —quality is down, today, down from 48 per inequity is up—and is, therefore, open to new directions.